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A project born from international cooperation
SVOM is the result of a partnership between France and China, through their space agencies (CNES on the French side and CNSA on the Chinese side), as well as research organizations like CEA and CNRS. This project aims to better understand the Universe by studying massive explosions of extremely distant stars.
The satellite was launched in June 2024 from China. A verification phase took place over several months to ensure the proper functioning of the satellite, its instruments, and the control centers. By early 2025, the results were deemed excellent, and SVOM was declared operational for at least three years.
Already impressive results
Since its commissioning, SVOM has detected over 100 gamma-ray bursts. These phenomena release colossal energy in just a few seconds—sometimes even less! One of them, observed in March 2025, turned out to be the third most distant ever detected. It occurred when the Universe was only 729 million years old.
Another burst detected in October 2024 was so promising that it immediately mobilized the James Webb Space Telescope to study it. These discoveries were celebrated during the Space Day of China in Shanghai.
What is a gamma-ray burst?
A gamma-ray burst is an ultra-powerful flash of light that occurs during extreme events, such as the collision of two neutron stars or the explosion of a massive star. Although very brief (sometimes just a few milliseconds), these flashes travel across the Universe over billions of light-years. By studying them, scientists can learn a great deal about the history and evolution of our cosmos.
But these events are extremely difficult to capture because they are rare and fleeting. Fortunately, SVOM is specially designed for this purpose.
A satellite equipped to miss nothing
SVOM carries four scientific instruments, two French and two Chinese, which complement each other to detect and analyze gamma-ray bursts:
- ECLAIRs (France): a wide-field telescope capable of spotting bursts in X-rays and gamma rays.
- MXT (France): a telescope for zooming in on the affected area and analyzing X-rays.
- GRM and VT (China): other complementary instruments to refine observations.
When a burst is detected by ECLAIRs, the satellite pivots within minutes to point all its instruments toward the source. The location data is sent to the ground in less than a minute thanks to a network of antennas distributed around the equator. In France and China, two monitoring centers receive this data and coordinate ground-based observations.
They can then alert large ground-based or space telescopes to quickly point their instruments in the right direction. Among them, the Franco-Mexican rapid telescope COLIBRI, specially designed for the mission, plays a crucial role in this setup.